From Purple Oopsie to Little Creature: How we landed on the company name
What comes to mind when you see the words “Purple Oopsie”? Perhaps nothing comes to mind, understably. Perhaps you recall videos of people celebrating Grimace’s birthday with the Grimace Shake on TikTok. Sure, the name is loosely descriptive but it does not provide any useful frame of reference to understand what it is.
So, what is Purple Oopsie?
It was a funny little incident at home that turned into an inside joke, and was almost the name of our game studio.
Wilson, Nile. Purple Oopsie. 2022, spilled berry smoothie.
What goes into a business name?
While there is no one right way to decide on a business name, we did try to balance different criteria we felt were relevant for our tabletop and video game studio. In brainstorming names for the company, we kept the following qualities in mind:
Gives off a playful vibe
Memorable and easy to spell
Three words or less
Comprised of words that already exist in the English language
Easily visualizable
Personal
It was really important to us that whatever we decided to proceed with would fit the image we want to build for ourselves through our games. Something intense like “Boneshredder Studio” wouldn’t really fit…
The other “Purple Oopsies”
When brainstorming our business name, we started off by playing around with combinations of our names and representations of our names, but many options felt bland or were already taken.
Some names were strong in one or a few of the qualities we identified, but we found it difficult to come up with something that fit all the criteria. To give a sense of how much we struggled, here’s a glimpse into some names we were considering:
Hetrea Studio, LLC
Soaring Circus Games, LLC
The Angel and the Fool, LLC
Skyriver Studio, LLC
Tears for an Ogre, LLC
Plimbo, LLC
Scrungly Studio, LLC
Purple Oopsie, LLC
Become Creature, LLC
Creature Mode, LLC
Penguin Thief, LLC
Humboldt Donation, LLC
Archelaus Studio, LLC
There were even more ideas that we either immediately scrapped because they just sounded bad, were too silly, or did not meet any of the criteria we set.
The logistics of choosing a business name
In addition to landing on a name that we liked, we needed to ensure the business name was viable from a legal and marketing perspective.
In general, when forming a business, you cannot register a business name that can be easily confused with an existing business. Since we live in and decided to establish our business in New York State, we followed the guidance from the New York Department of State website and searched each of our potential business names in the Corporation and Business Entities Database. If you are planning on establishing a business, you will want to do the same in your respective region.
After confirming the potential business name was legally viable, we wanted to make sure the name wasn’t already taken on social media. This was honestly a bit trickier considering there are way more people taking usernames than people officially registering business names. Also, usernames are not limited to states or regions. Similarly, we wanted to verify that some form of the business name would be available as a web domain to use for the company website.
Ultimately, we were able to narrow down our list to just a few options to send out in a survey to friends and family. After gathering feedback from the survey and sleeping on it for a few days, we decided to move forward with Little Creature since it was fairly well-perceived, met all of our business name criteria, and had a lot of potential for cute branding.
Conclusion
After months of deliberation, we happily landed on Little Creature, LLC as the name of our tabletop and video game studio. There are a lot of factors that go into selecting a business name and it can be stressful at times, but iterating over a wide variety of ideas and taking the time to refine and think through can be a fun and worthwhile process!
Speaking of ideation, what was your favorite alternate name for Little Creature? Let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear from you!
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Resources
General tips for naming a business: https://hbr.org/2022/03/how-to-pick-the-best-name-for-your-company
Requirement for LLC names in New York State: https://dos.ny.gov/forming-limited-liability-company-new-york
Search existing business names in New York State: https://apps.dos.ny.gov/publicInquiry/
